Populist taps Israelis' concerns

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TEL AVIV They pitched tents along Rothschild Boulevard and took to the streets in unprecedented numbers, hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the rising costs of gas, apartments, even cottage cheese, in the summer of 2011.

Back on the boulevard Wednesday, many of those middle-class protesters said they had taken their grievances to the ballot box the day before, helping to catapult Yair Lapid, a journalist-turned-populist-politician, into Israel's newest power broker.

“He spoke out the strongest about how everything in this country is upside-down,” said Elad Shoshan, 28, who works with computers and rents an apartment on a cheaper street off the boulevard.

Echoing the campaign mantra of his candidate, Roni Klein, 52, an accountant, said, “My wife and I work, and still it is very hard for us to finish the month.”

Lapid's new, centrist Yesh Atid party shocked the political establishment by winning 19 of parliament's 120 seats, becoming Israel's second-largest faction and a crucial partner for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose relatively poor showing left him scrambling to form a stable coalition.

While Netanyahu remains all but assured of serving a third term – Lapid said Wednesday that he would not unite with Arab lawmakers to stop him – Yesh Atid's ascendance promises to shift the government's focus to pocketbook concerns despite the pressing foreign policy issues Israel faces.

Lapid's campaign hardly challenged Netanyahu's policies on the Iranian nuclear threat, the tumult in the Arab world or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was the first election in memory in which security issues were not emphasized, as many Israelis see them as too tough to tackle. Even Netanyahu barely mentioned Iran, his major issue on the world stage.

Instead, Lapid captured the hearts of Israel's silent majority with his personal charm and a positive, inclusive message that harnessed the everyday frustrations that fueled the huge social justice protests in 2011.

One pollster found that about 40 percent of Lapid's supporters defined themselves as right-leaning, and in Israel's coalition system, many saw his success as a tactical move by voters not to oust Netanyahu but to nudge him to broaden the agenda.

On Wednesday, the prime minister embraced Lapid's platform, promising a government “as broad as possible” that would bring change on three fronts: affordable housing, government reform and forcing ultra-Orthodox Jews to “share the burden” of military service and taxes.

While Lapid has called for a return to talks with the Palestinians, he shares Netanyahu's skepticism about the lack of a partner, saying this week, “I don't think the Arabs want peace.” He opposes division of Jerusalem and made his foreign policy speech in Ariel, a Jewish settlement 12 miles into the West Bank that the Palestinians see as a threat to the viability of their future state.

“The majority of Israelis came to the conclusion that there will be no new Middle East,” Lapid said over cappuccino here last month. “What we want is not a happy marriage but a decent divorce.”

Instead, the change voters were seeking was more about the nature of politics itself.

Ayasha Gavriel Rosenthal, 61, said she “chose Lapid because I was looking for a leader who is humane,” then added, “I also like that he looks terrific.”

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